On the Phenomena of the Glacial Epoch. 241 



duced in adding to the size of the Alpine glaciers? . . . . 

 The action of the south wind was not in abeyance, but its 

 character was entirely different, and of an opposite nature. 

 Instead of passing over a parched and scorching desert, it 

 would plentifully absorb moisture from a sea many hundred 

 miles wide, and when after complete saturation it struck the 

 Alps, it would be driven up into the higher and more rari- 

 fled regions of the atmosphere. Then the aerial current, as 

 fast as it was cooled, would discharge its aqueous burden in 

 the form of snow, so that the same wind, which is now 

 called ' the devourer of ice/ would become its principal 

 feeder." 



Notwithstanding the deference due to men of such high 

 reputation, we must say that we cannot adopt their views. 

 We are not prepared to admit the assumptions which Pro- 

 fessor Frankland makes, and. we question the accuracy of 

 the conclusions which he draws from his experiments ; but 

 even though we should take them all for granted, we can- 

 not agree in supposing that the watery exhalations from a 

 tepid ocean would produce cold in the regions to which they 

 were carried. The principles that regulate the radiation of 

 heat may not perhaps be very fully understood ; but it cer- 

 tainly seems a very strange idea to suppose that the radia- 

 tion of heat from moist air so vastly exceeds that from dry 

 air, that while a current of the one produces a genial warmth, 

 a current of the other is the cause of glacial cold. 



In such a condition of the earth and sea as Professor 

 Frankland supposes, there would, no doubt, be a far greater 

 amount of moisture carried from the equator to the pole, 

 but there would, at the same time, be along with it a much 

 larger amount of heat, and that heat must have tended, not 

 to increase, but to diminish the intensity of the cold. 



Instead of entering into an elaborate refutation of his 

 suppositions and arguments, we need only refer to the well- 

 known fact, that the wind from the south-west, which follows 

 the course of the Gulf-Stream, comes to our shores, at the 

 present day, in precisely the same condition as that which 

 Professor Frankland assigns to the aerial currents of the 

 glacial period, and which Sir C. Lycll ascribes to the sirocco 



